Claim: Image shows dead woman who collects the souls of people who don't forward a chain e-mail message.
Example:[Collected via e-mail, November, 2004]
This photo was taken in a hospital after the patient was in an accident where he was responsible for a young woman's death.
It is said that when you receive this image and do not send it to at least five people, the woman will look for you during the night to collect your soul.
People in Laredo, Texas, received this image and did not send it and were killed outside a bar; it looked as if this woman killed them. Send it to five people or the woman will look for you.
Origins: Responding to readers who forward us photos purportedly showing ghosts is always problematic — those who don't believe in ghosts need no reassurance that such pictures are phony, while believers demand proof that ghosts don't exist, a standard impossible to
meet.
Suffice it to say that the October 2004 item reproduced above is nothing more than a common type of chain letter (the "luck" or "prayer" letter), a form that has been around since at least the 19th century and promises dire consequences (or at least bad luck) to recipients who fail to forward the message to the requisite number of people. (Such letters often include anecdotes explaining the disastrous fates that supposedly befell some recipients who didn't heed the enclosed warning and unwisely broke the chain.) That such a letter is now disseminated through e-mail rather than the postal service and includes a fabricated photograph of an "avenging spirit" doesn't make it any different than century-old versions — only the style has changed, not the substance.
The backstory for the image of the woman included with this version claims that "People in Laredo, Texas, received this image and did not send it and were killed outside a bar; it looked as if this woman killed them." The truth has far less to do with murdering ghosts than it does with movies: the picture came from a 2003 Thai horror film variously titled The Mother or The Unborn or Bangkok Haunted 2: The Unborn. The spooky image was used as the DVD artwork for the film. The sleeping person in the photo is not, as the e-mail would have it, a man but rather Thai actress Aranya Namwong.
